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cessors in the Saxon and Anglian Bretwaldas ;^[1] and lastly the Comes Britanniae in the west protecting the whole of Upper Britain, or, as it was now called, Britannia.

This Britannia, by the withdrawal of the legions from Chester and Caerlleon, became exposed to the incoming of Picts and Scots, which were the general names given by the Romans to the barbarians who dwelt beyond the Wall of Hadrian and in Ireland respectively. Given that a people dwelt beyond the Wall, it would be commonly classed with the Picts whether it was racially Pictish or otherwise. These two peoples entered Britannia from over the water,^[2] the Scots invading the west coast and effecting settlements in various districts ;^[3] and the Picts starting from due north and landing on the seaboard from Anglesey to the mouth of the river Dee. Owing to the limitation of the term Picts in later times

1. Bede's Ecc. Hist. II. 5 ; Saxon Chronicle under 827 ; Stevenson's Asser, 147, note I.
2. ' Duabus primum gentibus transmarinis vehementer saevis, Scotorum a circione, Pictorum ab aquilone calcabilis.' Excidium Britanniae c. 14 (Mommsen's Chr. Min. III. p. 33). Bede, who bases almost everything he has to say concerning the early centuries of post-Roman Britain on the Excidium, and indeed incorporates whole passages into his text, completely misunderstands the term transmarini as applied to the Picts, which he explains as being applicable to them in that they came from beyond the Firths of Forth and Clyde (H. E. I. 12). The only part of southern Britain which could be approached over the water from the north-west and the north is North Wales, which proves that the Britannia underlying that of the 'edited' Exadium, which came into Bede's hands, was the Britannia of the genuine Gildas, including Wales plus the Devonian peninsula.
3. Vita S. Carantod and Vita S. David in Rees's Cambro-British SS. pp. 97, 1 01, 124 ; the De Situ Brecheniauc and Cognado Brychan in Y Cymmrodor, vol. XIX ; the Hist. Britt. (Chr. Min. III. 156). See also Bury's Life of St. Patrick, 325.